In the call center industry, call center agents respond to telephone call inquiries from customers and businesses. However, in order to promote goods and services of call center (“CC”) business customers, the call center utilizes call center agents to call members of the general public and discuss potential sales of goods and services for call center business customers. Regarding these outbound calls to the general public, it is not efficient to have the call center agents independently dial each called party or TBC party. It is also known that CC business customers can purchase a list of telephone numbers which includes the name of the TBC party or use their own compiled list of customers (also compiled from business affiliates).
In reaction to an overuse of telephone calls to members of the general public using automatic telephone dialing systems, the federal government enacted the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. sec. 151-231. The Act, as construed by the Federal Communications Commission, prohibits the use of a predictive dialer function by a call center. However, a recent court decision has found that when a call center agent chooses to launch a call to a TBC party on a call list, this does not fall within the prohibition of an automated call distributor (ACD) system as defined by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In Smith v. Stellar Recovery, Inc., Case No. 2:15-cv-11717 (Mar. 13, 2017, ED Mich, Order and Opinion), the court described Stellar Recovery, Inc.'s system as having a Human Call Initiator (HCl) system which is different than the prohibited ACD autodialers. The Stellar system “requires human intervention—the clicker agent—to launch an outgoing call. ([Stellar's manager] Stark's testimony explain[s] that only when an ‘agent chooses to launch the call’ can the [human call initiator] HCl system make an outgoing call). Since the ‘basic function’ of [a prohibited] autodialer is the capacity to dial phone numbers ‘without human intervention,’ and the [Stellar human call initiator] HCl system lacks that capacity, the HCl is not an autodialer.” Opinion page 6.